


it's a bone deep chill

by malaika_mzuri



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love, but not really, they can't catch a break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 07:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15189806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malaika_mzuri/pseuds/malaika_mzuri
Summary: Steve after the snap





	it's a bone deep chill

**Author's Note:**

> The effect of me not sleeping til 5am... it should have been me.

_ Oh God. _

Two syllables. One name. It was almost unfamiliar in its taste, after the years of war- his health, his country, his sanity- had chewed him up and spat him out again, too bitter and jaded with a heart still frozen so deep only one person could penetrate it. He hadn’t called it out and meant it in so long, too long his mother probably thinks as she looks down on him and that thought only drives the knife deeper, hairline cracks spreading further along the ice living in his chest.

Because that name isn’t the one he can’t stop hearing, echoing around his head like an alarm as if this was just a nightmare he could wake up from. It was almost the same but not quite: a shriek, a laugh, a shout, a groan, a whisper, a scream as he watched the near corrupted video of the first time in the chair.

It was a bewildered query, soft but sure because Steve was meant to be able to fix this. He was meant to know how to deal with this, just like he promised.

Bucky had trusted him to do that.

But instead he was sitting here on the forest floor, using every ounce of his concentration just to keep taking one breath after the other when all he wanted to do was to succumb to the chill spreading across him and sleep for an eternity instead of just 70 years. Vision’s monochrome body in front of him served as a constant reminder of what he’d lost, just because they wanted more  _ time. _ A selfish part of him wanted to scream out that he had never gotten any, let alone enough, it was just near eighty years of short lived reunions and long expanses of time where he ached so bad he almost forgot it was there. Almost. 

Steve let that darkness bubble up to the surface and a bitter chuckle tried to break free, caught on the knot wedged inside his throat that was suffocating him from the inside out. He felt the warmth coming from Natasha’s hand hover over his shoulder, unsure as to whether she should continue as if he were some caged animal. Steve responded in kind, jerking away from her violently before staggering to his feet, the sound of his harsh breathing filling his ears and fitting itself in between the constant chime of his own name spoken like a funeral bell.

He couldn’t let her touch him because it would wipe it away. It would wipe away the fact that Bucky was the last person,  _ person _ he thought as the ringing from his earlier tussle faded to a dull roar, to touch him.

The glinting of the sun over gold seams attracted his attention earlier and Steve saw him get knocked down, too occupied with his own monstrosities to be able to help but by the time he turned back, both bodies were stil. His heart had started beating faster to the rhythm of no, not again, not for real before he watched powerful legs rear back to send the carcass flying away. In that split second, Steve had never known more fear because there was no safety net, no body to be discovered or half of his soul to track around the world. He would have just been gone, the brightest light in his life snuffed out as easily as a flickering candle in a winter’s breeze. 

Steve had stumbled over then, reaching down for Bucky before he had even reached his side and pulled him up, keeping their palms enclosed around each other for a couple more precious seconds because the heat meant he was still there. With him. Ironic now that Bucky is still there in his hand, the last place he’ll ever be apart from scattered across the forest floor, his final resting place too insignificant for the man who would die for-  _ had _ died because of all those years ago when he embraced the cold that was already taking root inside.

The last thing he had said was  _ you okay _ . That was the last thing and Bucky had nodded and suddenly their little reprieve was cut short because the battle noises got through the bubble that surrounded them sometimes, keeping them locked in their own world and it was back to the reality of their situation. 

If only he had known. If he knew that was the time for the last words he would ever say to him, he would have said more. Like _ I’m so glad you’re finally happy and free  _ or  _ the sound of your laugh when you first saw my beard felt like my first bit of oxygen since before the war _ .

What he really should have said though, if he was honest enough- brave enough was  _ I have wanted to kiss you stupid since 1934 when my asthma would have stopped me halfway through and I’ve loved you more than anything for a hell of a lot longer.  _

Because that’s the funny thing, he can’t even pinpoint the moment he knew that Bucky was it for him. It was as if it was woven into the very fabric of his DNA, something that the serum had only amplified so deep that he was sure that it was his life source all those years in the ice. Somehow, his body knew that his soul was still out there, existing and waiting and hurting and it was that knowledge that kept him.

It kept him to only witness Bucky forever slipping from his grasp, the universe taunting him with the idea that maybe this time they’ll get to keep each other only to be ripped away again.

He found himself back there, at the scene of the crime, a single print calling out for his hand to reconcile with it because there lay the focus of his universe reduced back to dust and ash and  _ oh God _ , it was disturbing how biblical it all was because all his life, he had been drilled with how wrong it was and yet he here was separated from his Eden like a battered and bruised Adam.

Steve sat down next to the gun and picked it up but  _ it was still warm _ and suddenly he was brought back to an evening only a few months before, the two of them by the lake watching the sunset ripple colours over the water that Steve itched to paint but instead settled with brushing his fingers through the impossibly soft hair that had spread all over his lap. Bucky had told him that Hydra hadn’t let him out too long and he didn’t eat properly until he got to Romania so the first time he ran at the normal serum temperature he thought he was dying. He said he thought he was dying and even through his tangled brain, the only wish he had was to see Steve one more time.he had tilted his head back slightly and Steve was enraptured by the stare of those blue eyes which felt like, at that moment, could see through him and pick apart all the things he never said. He knew now that right then was the moment where he should have spilled it out into the open, at least let it be known but instead he made a joke about the fact that he got his wish and a special forces crew on top of that and it was gone.

So all he had left were ashes and a gun which he wasn’t sure was warm from Bucky or the tight grip he still had on it and it was poetic that he held the only remaining traces of his soul in both hands when the first time he lost him, he couldn’t even grab him with one. Right there he knew that quote was bullshit because he had loved and he had lost, again and again and again, but that love never went away, instead only chilling him deeper as it called out for the mismatched arms that would never be able to drive it away. No, he had loved  _ but  _ lost and his body was screaming out because one isn’t meant to exist without his soul.

Yet here he was, still surviving but not quite living- never living ever again. He had the audacity to still be here when Bucky was not and it felt  _ wrong _ . Because he had never prepared for this eventuality, that he would be the one to lose the other and yet that’s all that kept happening.

A small part of Steve cursed him out, cursed him to hell and back because he should have been the one to go first, it was written in his cards since he first took that sickly cry and the universe destined him to love someone he could never truly keep.

Tennyson had it all wrong: it was better to have loved and  _ be  _ lost because surviving was a pain that made Steve turn against that love anyway.


End file.
